The Mediator #1: Shadowland

by Jenny Carroll

  Cee Cee elbowed him. "Adam," she hissed. Then, to the father, she said brightly, "Don't listen to him, Father Dom. I think you look great. Well, for a guy with a bunch of broken bones, I mean."

  "Children." Father Dominic looked really happy to see them. "What a delight! But why are you wasting a beautiful afternoon like this one visiting an old man in a hospital? You ought to be down at the beach enjoying the nice weather."

  "We're actually here doing an article for the Mission News about the accident," Cee Cee said. "We just got done interviewing the monsignor. It's really unfortunate, about the archbishop coming, and all, and the statue of Father Serra not having a head."

  "Yeah," Adam said. "A real bummer."

  "Well," Father Dominic said. "Never mind that. It's the caring spirit of you children that should most impress the archbishop."

  "Amen," said Adam solemnly.

  Before either of us had a chance to berate Adam for being sarcastic, a nurse came in and told Cee Cee and I that we had to leave because she had to give Father Dom his sponge bath.

  "Sponge bath," Adam grumbled as we made our way back to the car. "Father Dom gets a sponge bath, but me, a guy who can actually appreciate something like that, what do I get?"

  "A chance to play chauffeur to the two most beautiful girls in Carmel?" Cee Cee offered, helpfully.

  "Yeah," Adam said. "Right." Then he glanced at me. "Not that you aren't the most beautiful girl in Carmel, Suze....I just meant…Well, you know...."

  "I know," I said, with a smile.

  "I mean, a sponge bath. And did you get a look at that nurse?" Adam held the passenger seat forward so Cee Cee could crawl into the backseat. "There must be something to this priest thing. Maybe I should enroll."

  From the backseat Cee Cee said, "You don't enroll, you receive a calling. And believe me, Adam, you wouldn't like it. They don't let priests play Nintendo."

  Adam digested this. "Maybe I could form a new order," he said, thoughtfully. "Like the Franciscans, only we'd be the Joystick Order. Our motto would be High Score for One, Pizza for All."

  Cee Cee said, "Look out for that seagull."

  We were on Carmel Beach Road. Just beyond the low stone wall to our right was the Pacific, lit up like a jewel by the enormous yellow ball of sun hovering above it. I guess I must have been looking at it a little longingly – I still hadn't gotten used to seeing it all the time – because Adam went, "Aw, hell," and zipped into a parking space that a BMW had just vacated. I looked at him questioningly' as he threw the car into park, and he said, "What? You don't have time to sit and watch the sunset?"

  I was out of the car in a flash.

  How, I wondered a little while later, had I ever not looked forward to moving here? Sitting on a blanket Adam had extricated from the trunk of his car, watching the joggers and the evening surfers, the Frisbee-catching dogs and the tourists with their cameras, I felt better than I had in a long time. It might have been the fact that I was still operating on about four hours of sleep. It might have been that the heavy odor of brine was clouding my senses. But I really felt, for the first time in what seemed like forever, at peace.

  Which was weird, considering the fact that in a few hours, I was going to be doing battle with the forces of evil.

  But until then, I decided to enjoy myself. I turned my face toward the setting sun, feeling its warming rays on my cheeks, and listened to the roaring of the waves, the shrieking of the gulls, and the chatter of Cee Cee and Adam.

  "So I said to her, Claire, you're nearly forty. If you and Paul want to have another kid, you had better hurry. Time is not on your side." Adam sipped a latte he'd picked up from a coffee shop near where we'd parked. "And she was all, 'But your father and I don't want you to feel threatened by the new baby,' and I was like, 'Claire, babies don't threaten me.' You know what makes me feel threatened? Steroid-popping Neanderthals like Brad Ackerman. They threaten me."

  Cee Cee shot Adam a warning look, then looked at me. "How are you getting along with your new stepbrothers, Suze?"

  I tore my eyes away from the setting sun. "All right, I guess. Does Do – I mean, Brad really take steroids?"

  Adam said, "I shouldn't have mentioned that. I'm sorry. I'm sure he doesn't. All those guys on the wrestling team, though – they scare me. And they're so homophobic … well, you can't help wondering about their sexual orientation. I mean, they all think I'm gay, but you wouldn't catch me in a pair of tights grabbing at some other guy's inner thigh."

  I felt a need to apologize for my stepbrother, and did so, adding, "I'm not so sure he's gay. He got very excited when Kelly Prescott called the other night and invited us to her pool party on Saturday."

  Adam whistled, and Cee Cee said unexpectedly, "Well, well, well. Are you sure this blanket is good enough for you? Maybe you would prefer a cashmere beach blanket. That's what Kelly and all her friends sit on."

  I blinked at them, realizing I'd just committed a faux pas. "Oh, I'm sorry. Kelly didn't invite you guys? But I just assumed she was inviting all the sophomores."

  "Certainly not," Cee Cee said with a sniff. "Just the sophomores with status, which Adam and I definitely lack."

  "But you," I said, "are the editor of the school paper."

  "Right," Adam said. "Translate that into dork and you'll have an idea why we've never been invited to any of Princess Kelly's pool parties."

  "Oh," I said. I was quiet for a minute, listening to the waves. Then I said, "Well, it's not like I was planning on going."

  "You weren't?" Cee Cee's eyes bugged out behind her glasses.

  "No. At first because I had a date with Bryce, which is off now. But now because … well, if you guys aren't going, who would I talk to?"

  Cee Cee leaned back on the blanket. "Suze," she said. "Have you ever considered running for class VP?"

  I laughed. "Oh, right. I'm the new kid, remember?"

  "Yeah," Adam said. "But there's something about you. I saw real leadership potential in the way you trounced Debbie Mancuso yesterday. Guys always admire girls who look as if any minute they might punch another girl in the mouth. We just can't help it." He shrugged. "Maybe it's in the genes."

  "Well," I said with a laugh. "I'll certainly take it under advisement. I did hear a rumor Kelly was planning on blowing the entire class budget on some kind of dance – "

  "Right." Cee Cee nodded. "She does that every year. The stupid spring dance. It's so boring. I mean, if you don't have a boyfriend, what is the point? There's nothing to do there but dance."

  "Wait," Adam said. "Remember that time we brought the water balloons?"

  "Well," Cee Cee amended. "Okay, that year was fun."

  "I was kind of thinking," I heard myself saying, "that something like this might be better. You know. A cookout at the beach. Maybe a couple of them."

  "Hey," Adam said. "Yeah! And a bonfire! The pyro in me has always wanted to do a bonfire on the beach."

  Cee Cee said, "Totally. That's totally what we should do. Suze, you've got to run for VP."

  Holy smoke, what had I done? I didn't want to be sophomore class VP! I didn't want to get involved! I had no school spirit – I had no opinion on anything! What was I doing? Had I lost my mind?

  "Oh, look," Adam said, pointing suddenly at the sun. "There it goes."

  The great orange ball seemed to sink into the sea as it began its slow descent below the horizon. I didn't see any splashing or steam, but I could have sworn I heard it hit the water's surface.

  "There goes the sun," Cee Cee sang softly.

  "Da da da da da," Adam said.

  "There goes the sun." I joined in.

  Okay, I have to admit, it was kind of childish, sitting there singing, watching the sun go down. But it was also kind of fun. Back in New York, we used to sit in the park and watch the undercover cops arrest drug dealers. But that wasn't anywhere near as nice as this, singing happily on a beach as the sun went down.

  Something strange was happening. I wasn't sure what it was.
<
br />   "And I say," the three of us sang, "it's all right!"

  And, strangely enough, at that moment, I actually believed it would be. All right, I mean.

  And that's when I realized what was happening:

  I was fitting in. Me, Susannah Simon, mediator. I was fitting in somewhere for the first time in my life.

  And I was happy about it. Really happy. I actually believed, just then, that everything was going to be all right.

  Boy, was I ever in denial.

  C H A P T E R

  17

  My alarm went off at midnight. I didn't hit the snooze button. I turned it off, clapped my hands to turn on the bedside lamp, rolled over, and stared at the canopy over my bed.

  This was it. D-day. Or E-day, I should have called it.

  I'd been so tired after dinner, I knew I'd never make it without a nap. I told my mother I was going upstairs to do homework, and then I'd lain down with the intention of sacking out for a few hours. Back in our old place in Brooklyn, this wouldn't have been a problem. My mom would have left me alone like I asked. But in the Ackerman household, the words I want to be alone were apparently completely meaningless. And not because the place is crawling with ghosts, either. No, it was the living who kept on bugging me for a change.

  First it was Dopey. When I'd sat down to another gourmet dinner, immaculately prepared by my new stepfather, an interrogation of sorts had begun because I had ended up not getting home until after six. There was the usual "Where were you?" from my mother (even though I'd so conscientiously left her that explanatory message). Then a "Did you have fun?" from Andy. And then there was a "Who'd you go with?" from, of all people, Doc. And when I said, "Adam McTavish and Cee Cee Webb," Dopey actually snorted disgustedly and, chewing on a meatball, said, "Christ. The class freaks."

  Andy said, "Hey. Watch it."

  "Well, jeez, Dad," Dopey said. "One's a freakin' albino and the other's a fag."

  This earned him a very hard wallop on the head from his father, who also grounded him for a week. Meaning, I couldn't help pointing out to Dopey later as we were clearing our plates from the table, that he would be unable to attend Kelly Prescott's pool party, which, by the way, I – Queen of the Freaks – had gotten him invited to.

  "Too bad, bubby," I said, giving Dopey a sympathetic pat on the cheek.

  He slapped my hand away. "Yeah?" he said. "Well, at least nobody'll be callin' me a fag hag tomorrow."

  "Oh, sweetie," I said. I reached out and tweaked the cheek I'd just patted. "You'll never have to worry about people calling you that. They call you much worse things."

  He hit my hand again, his fury apparently so great, it rendered him temporarily speechless.

  "Promise me you'll never change," I begged him. "You're so adorable just the way you are."

  Dopey called me a very bad name just as his father entered the kitchen with the remains of the salad.

  Andy grounded him for another week, and then sent him to his room. To show his unhappiness with this turn of events, Dopey put on the Beastie Boys and played them at such high decibels that sleep was impossible for me…at least until Andy came up and took away Dopey's speakers. Then everything got very quiet, and I was just about to doze off when someone tapped at my door. It was Doc.

  "Um," he said, glancing nervously past me, into the darkness of my room – the "haunted" room of the house. "Is this a good time to, um, talk about the things I found out? About the house, I mean? And the people who died here?"

  "People? In the plural sense?"

  "Oh, sure," Doc said. "I was able to find a surprising amount of documentation listing the crimes committed in this house, many of which involved murder of varying degrees. Because it was a boarding house, there were any number of transient residents, most of whom were on their way home after striking it rich in the gold rush farther up state. Many of them were killed in their sleep and their gold absconded, some thought by the owners of the establishment, but most likely it was by other residents – "

  Fearing I was going to hear that Jesse had died this way – and suddenly not at all eager to know anymore what had caused his death, particularly not if he happened to be around to overhear – I said, "Listen, Doc – I mean, Dave. I don't think I've gotten over my jet lag yet, so I'm trying to catch up a little on my sleep just now. Can we talk about this tomorrow at school? Maybe we could have lunch together."

  Doc's eyes widened. "Are you serious? You want to have lunch with me?"

  I stared at him. "Well, yeah. Why? Is there some rule high schoolers can't eat with middle schoolers?"

  "No," Doc said. "It's just that … they never do."

  "Well," I said. "I will. Okay? You buy the drinks, and I'll buy dessert."

  "Great!" Doc said, and went back to his own room looking like I'd just said tomorrow I'd present him with the throne of England.

  I was just on the verge of dozing off again when there was another knock on the door. This time when I opened it, Sleepy was standing there looking more wide awake, for once, than I felt.

  "Look," he said. "I don't care if you're gonna take the car out at night, just put the keys back on the hook, okay?"

  I stared up at him. "I haven't been taking your car out at night, Slee – I mean, Jake."

  He said, "Whatever. Just put the keys back where you found 'em. And it wouldn't hurt if you pitched in for gas now and then."

  I said, slowly, so he would understand, "I haven't been taking your car out at night, Jake."

  "What you do on your own time is your business," Sleepy said. "I mean, I don't think gangs are cool or anything. But it's your life. Just put my keys back so I can find 'em."

  I could see there was no point in arguing this, so I said, "Okay, I will," and shut the door.

  After that, I got a good few hours of much needed sleep. I didn't exactly wake up feeling refreshed – I could have slept for maybe another year – but I felt a little better, anyway.

  Good enough to go kick some ghost butt, anyway.

  I'd gotten together all the things I was going to need earlier in the evening. My backpack was crammed with candles, paint brushes, a Tupperware container of chicken blood that I'd bought at the butcher counter in the Safeway I made Adam take me to before dropping me off at home, and various other assorted necessary components of a real Brazilian exorcism. I was completely ready to go. All I had to do was throw on my high tops, and I was out of there.

  Except, of course, Jesse had to show up just as I was jumping off the porch roof.

  "Okay," I said, straightening up, my feet smarting a little in spite of the soft ground I'd landed on. "Let's get one thing straight right now. You are not going to show up down at the Mission tonight. Got that? You show up down there, and you are going to be very, very sorry."

  Jesse was leaning against one of the giant pine trees in our yard. Just leaning there, his arms folded across his chest, looking at me as if I were some sort of interesting sideshow attraction, or something.

  "I mean it," I said. "It's going to be a bad night for ghosts. Real bad. So I wouldn't show up down there if I were you."

  Jesse, I noticed, was smiling. There wasn't as much moon as there'd been the night before, but there was enough so that I could see that the little curl at the corners of his lips was turning skyward, not down.

  "Susannah," he said. "What are you up to?"

  "Nothing." I marched over to the carport, and yanked out the ten-speed. "I just got some things to settle."

  Jesse strolled over toward me as I was strapping on the bike helmet. "With Heather?" he asked lightly.

  "Right. With Heather. I know things got out of hand last time, but this time, things are going to be different."

  "How, precisely?"

  I swung a leg over that stupid bar they put on boys' bikes, and stood at the top of the driveway, my fingers curled around the handlebars. "Okay," I said. "I'll level with you. I'm going to perform an exorcism."

  His right hand shot out. It gripped the bar be
tween my fingers. "A what?" he said in a voice completely devoid of the good humor that had been in it before.

  I swallowed. Okay, I wasn't feeling quite as confident as I was acting. In fact, I was practically quaking in my Converse All Stars. But what else could I do? I had to stop Heather before she hurt anybody else. And it would have been really helpful if everybody could have just supported me in my efforts.

  "You can't help me," I said, woodenly. "You can't go down there tonight, Jesse, or you might get exorcized, too."

  "You," Jesse said, speaking as tonelessly as I was, "are insane."

  "Probably," I said, miserably.

  "She'll kill you," Jesse said. "Don't you understand? That's what she wants."

  "No." I shook my head. "She doesn't want to kill me. She wants to kill everybody I care about first. Then she wants to kill me." I sniffled. For some reason, my nose was running. Probably because it was so cold out. I don't see how those palm trees could stay alive. It was like forty degrees, or something, outside.

  "But I'm not going to let her, see?" I continued. "I'm going to stop her. Now let go of my bike."

  Jesse shook his head. "No. No. Even you wouldn't do something so stupid."

  "Even me?" I was hurt, in spite of myself. "Thanks."

  He ignored me. "Does the priest know about this, Susannah? Did you tell the priest?"

  "Um, sure. He knows. He's, uh, meeting me there."

  "The priest is meeting you there?"

  "Yeah, uh-huh." I gave a shaky laugh. "You don't think I'd try something like this on my own, do you? I mean, jeez, I'm not that stupid, no matter what you might think."

  His grip on the bike relaxed a little. "Well, if the priest will be there …"

  "Sure. Sure he will."

  The grip tightened again. Jesse's other hand came around, and a long finger wagged in my face as he said, "You're lying, aren't you? The priest isn't going to be there at all. She hurt him, didn't she? This morning? I thought so. Did she kill him?"

  I shook my head. I didn't feel so much like talking all of a sudden. It felt like there was something in my throat. Something that hurt.